This page is dedicated to those individuals (whether they be patient, professional or the average Jane/John) who have gone above and beyond in an effort to help their fellow citizens.
Their efforts and those of their communities to improve the lives of others and/or bring awareness of important happenings to the publics attention should be commended.
The more positive & encouraging the efforts we bring to light, the more it will hopefully inspire others to follow suit.
Do you have a patient, professional or average Jane/John who's doing a kindness you'd like to recommend to be listed on this page? Feel free to contact me.
In Her Fathers Honor...
I found it commendable that a person who read a stranger's story, was so moved to design and create such a beautiful work of art. Dianna Lynn Puente casually scrolling the internet, stumbles across a story of a junior varsity High School football player who suffered a catastrophic injury while playing the game. Finding her act of compassionate generosity moving, I asked her what it was that prompted such an act of kindness?
"Well, I was doing some reading online and I'll send you the article, about Jordyn he was injured playing football. And it touched my heart. I thought I have to get in contact with his family so I can make him a quilt since I was never able to make my Daddy a quilt who was also paralyzed due to medical who passed in 2007 I'll make him one in my Daddys honor. So I tracked down his grandmother."
If you'd like to help contribute to Jordyns continued care, please visit his GoFundMe page here: https://gofund.me/cc1cdd9d Thank You.
The Hall of Fame
Honors:
She’s a rare breed: a dentist who makes house calls to the elderly
Here's an exemplary example of a professional who thinks 'outside' the box within today's dentistry. Necessity is the mother of invention and Dr. Alisa Koffman has reinvented her dental practice in a rather unusual way. Seeing the need to accommodate those who were no longer able to travel due to age, disability, illness, Dr. Koffman took her practice, on the road.
“There’s a need for this kind of service,” she said. “I don’t know why it hasn’t been met.”
One case early in her career became the catalyst that created her unique style of practice. Thirty years later, she is still zipping around town to fill cavities, make dentures, extract teeth, or administer cleanings to patients who can no longer visit a dental office.
"The number of Americans 65 and over is expected to nearly double in the next thirty years, but few dentists focus on the very old", said Kauffman, who lectures on geriatric dentistry at the University of Pennsylvania. Even fewer make house calls.
Kauffman is working on a training program to teach dentists in other parts of the country to work with the elderly.
Bullied on social media for her appearance, her inner beauty inspired the internet to give her a new smile.
No one should ever have to suffer hatred the way Jessica McDaniels did. But even though social media can enable people to be cruel, it can also be a powerful tool for change.
St. Louis, MO, resident Jessica McDaniels was overcome with grief when netizens took a moment she captured on Facebook and began to ruthlessly cyberbully her for it. But with every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and social media worked tirelessly to give her a new smile.
She started a GoFundMe page for McDaniels so that she could finally have the dental surgery she needed. As of this date, it has raised over $8,000 dollars.
However, dental surgery is expensive. And even with the money from the GoFundMe campaign, McDaniel’s had difficulty finding a dental surgeon who would take her case.
Social media again came to the rescue. Her story went viral, and it came to the attention of Dr. Maryann Udy, with Northwest Oral Maxillo-Facial Surgeons. Dr. Udy contacted McDaniels, and offered to perform the procedure completely free of charge.
Aware of the GoFundme campaign running, Dr. Udy made McDaniels promise her something—once the surgery was over, she would use the money to take her two young children to Disneyland.
Burzynski, the Movie is an internationally award-winning documentary originally released in 2010 (with an Extended Edition released in 2011) that tells the true story of a medical doctor and Ph.D biochemist named Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski who won the largest, and possibly the most convoluted and intriguing legal battle against the Food & Drug Administration in American history.
His victorious battles with the United States government were centered around Dr. Burzynski’s gene-targeted cancer medicines he discovered in the 1970’s called Antineoplastons, which have currently completed Phase II FDA-supervised clinical trials in 2009 and has been given permission by the FDA to begin the final phase of FDA testing–randomized controlled clinical trials.
When Antineoplastons are approved, it will mark the first time in history a single scientist, not a pharmaceutical company, will hold the exclusive patent and distribution rights on a paradigm-shifting medical breakthrough.
Yet Wood’s attempt to do the right thing — for himself but also, he believes, for his patients — has collided with an unnerving reality: Opioids are ingrained in the culture of dentistry, and his decision has been bad for business.
Wood’s story is a case study of the pressures dentists face to prescribe potent pain pills, even as research shows most of their patients would do just fine with over-the-counter medications such as ibuprofen. Many patients have come to expect strong narcotics after having a tooth removed or undergoing a root canal.
The pressures go well beyond anxious patients: A major insurance company was hesitant to add Wood to its network because of his limited prescribing license.
“It’s almost like they’re telling me to prescribe opiates,” Wood told STAT. “Drugs are ruining this country and they want me to add to it. And I’ve basically said, ‘No, I won’t do it. You know, I will not do it.’”
Thank You dental supporter Suzan A. for bringing us the story! Great Job!
“I was concerned about patient harm from negligent practitioners more than I was from the taxpayer point of view,” Ellis says. “I mean, obviously, as a taxpayer, that concerns me as well. But the bigger issue was the patient harm in pediatric dental Medicaid settings.”
"NNU offers our heartfelt congratulations to Ann Wayt both for her steadfast advocacy for her patients and colleagues, and her refusal to be intimidated by a lawless employer,” said NNOC Co-President Malinda Markowitz, RN.
"If we treated medical error as a disease, it would be the third-largest killer in the United States," said Dr. Marty Makary, lead author of a study on fatal medical errors in the U.S.